“Inverting the Pyramid” for effective development co-operation

“The global leadership – that is the UN, Member states, G20, G77 and many others – has a historic opportunity to create a new global developmental framework for the post-2015 world that builds on the aspirations and ethos of the Millennium Declaration including theMillennium Development Goals and newly coined Sustainable Development Goals. This must also break radical new ground to ensure that the aspiration of wiping extreme poverty from the face of earth becomes a reality and does not remain a part of the ‘declaratory activism’ of the United Nations.

The global leadership has to revisit its own aspirations and dream bigger. In a world where the multidimensionality of poverty and its roots in political economic factors are established facts, a focus only on eradicating ‘extreme poverty’ is designing for failure. The vision for a new world post-2015 has to be rooted in a just, peaceful, humane and sustainable society. To achieve this ‘new deal’ dream, the focus must be on fighting a comprehensive battle against injustice, inequality and unsustainable development models, not limited to only looking at the manifestations of these structural and systemic issues. This is going to be the real test for our leadership.

Even partial success in creating a just and sustainable society depends on radically altering the path that the United Nations and Member States design for making these dreams a reality. It is ironic that a very tiny population of global economic and political elites, and in some cases national elites, design international development frameworks and the paths for implementation entirely on their own.”